English Toolkit

Do the following sentences seem fluent to you or would you change them in some way?

Each of those sentences represents one of 'the big four' challenges encountered by many people learning English as a second language. This is because not all languages use the same logic as English when putting words together to make sense: they use a different grammar. If we analyse those major grammatical challenges, we will get an idea of the nature of grammar itself - and specifically of English grammar.

The Big Four Challenges for people of non-English-speaking background

1.  Knowing when to insert the, a and an

• The red-orange appearance of the surface of Mars is caused by iron oxide, or rust.

Some languages don't use such articles but in English they are used all the time to introduce nouns. (See 3.1 and 3.2 - Articles.)

2.  Making nouns plural by, for example, adding s.

• There are twenty-five Earth hours in one Martian day.

In some languages, the presence of a modifier (e.g 'twenty-five', 'many', 'all'...) would signal that more than one hour was being spoken about so the word 'hour' itself would not be changed. However, in English, nouns are changed to show either plural or singular number. (See 5.1 - Nouns.)

3.  Changing verbs to be the same number as the subject.

• Conditions for the launch have changed.

In English, the verb is altered to reflect the number of the subject:...the condition...has changed; the conditions...have changed. This does not happen in some languages. (See 10.1 - Verbs.)

4.  Changing verbs to indicate past, present and future time consistently.

• ‘Opportunity’ was a robotic rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until mid-2018.

Some languages use modifiers such as 'today', 'yesterday', 'tomorrow' to indicate time - or, as in this case, they specify a time period; however, in English, the verbs change to indicate whether an action is set in the past, the present or the future even if modifiers are also used. (See 10.3-10.5 - Verbs.)

The 'big four' problems illustrate how each language has its own grammar...and that at the heart of English grammar is syntax (how words, phrases and clauses are woven together to make sense) and morphology, how we form and inflect (alter) individual words (e.g. singular hour changes to plural hours to indicate more than one hour).

In the word syntax, the Greek 'syn' means 'together' and 'tax' means 'to place'. Hence, syntax is simply about how we weave words together in the best order to make sense.

In the word morphology, morph means 'shape' and logia means 'the study of'. Hence, morphology is about understanding how words change their shape according to their place and function in a sentence, often by the addition of a prefix at the beginning or a suffix at the end: e.g. fill, refill, filling, filled... or reject, rejection, inject, interject, project, projectile...

While we have to control the 'big four' aspects of English grammar to be sound (passable) in English, to be totally fluent we have to control a host of other elements of syntax and morphology as well. English Toolkit identifies those elements and the errors that are commonly committed by both native speakers and people learning English, while also providing exercises to help you to avoid those errors.